Gaudeamus, p.4
Gaudeamus, page 4
I did not understand my attraction to Nonora. But from the first time she spoke my name, I was happy. I wasn’t brave enough to ask myself whether I liked her. But I had the feeling that something else altogether attracted me to her and delighted me in her presence. I knew how futile it was to read German after Nonora left. I think of all the pages I failed to absorb, because of the overpoweringly fresh scent of her that still lingered in my nostrils and the scenes recounted by Radu that flashed before my eyes.
I was afraid of her, and I wanted her. Catching myself desiring her, I would feel humiliated, I would scold and deride myself. A few hours would then pass, and again I would find myself wanting her.
The morning of the festival, she came to the train station, nervous about the role she had been assigned in the play. She hadn’t quite memorised her lines yet. With Radu, she drank four cognacs in the station buffet. She refused to let him pay.
‘You’ll cater to my every whim at the ball. Maybe you’ll even make me your queen.’
Radu sat enigmatically, whispering to her between puffs on his cigarette, ‘You’re so delicious.’
‘You’re insufferable!’
‘Your nostrils are quivering.’
‘And you assume it’s because of you?’
‘Naturally.’
‘You’re such a brute.’
‘I know; but you like me.’
Nonora feigned laughter.
‘You look like a convict: ugly, short-sighted, vulgar.’
‘But you still like me.’
‘You’re annoying, and you have a stutter. Go away; you aren’t fun anymore.’
Bibi was sick with longing for Andrei. Gaidaroff carried the makeup kit. The chairman, with lively eyes shining beneath a weary brow, ran back and forth with crates of items for the raffle, a crate of costumes, tickets for members, a folder of documents. The committee tried, without much success, to bring order to our expedition. Our raucous party occupied an entire train carriage. The chairman suggested we sing together, but was rejected by insurgents, who preferred to joke around in front of the windows.
We worked for three hours decorating the hall with pine boughs and paper streamers. The piano was out of tune, with three missing keys. But even so, I tried to play a bit of Grieg.
At dinner, in an empty restaurant warmed and brought to life by our energy, Nonora sat down between Radu and I.
‘Give me some wine! Give me some wine!’
Her acting, in the festival, had been far better than we could have suspected. After the curtain came down, she sought refuge in a nearby room and asked for some cigarettes. I had a packet and was about to offer her one of mine, but Radu proffered his packet first. She kissed him passionately, in front of us all. Radu blushed, but without losing his cool.
‘I would have kissed anyone who gave me a cigarette.’
The chairman, bewildered, had to overlook it; she had performed too well.
The girls pretended to be upset. Although saddened, only Bibi defended her.
‘That’s how she rewards them.’
Gaidaroff muttered to himself: ‘It’s my father’s fault, he never allowed me to smoke.’
Then came the ball: provincial girls with bad makeup, the entrants in the beauty contest, families who drank numerous bottles of soda water, engaged couples in black clothes and shoes that were too tight, second-lieutenants who ironically remarked: ‘Mademoiselle is pensive.’
The chairman entrusted me with overseeing the most difficult task: the cloakroom. I had to keep tabs on four hundred overcoats, capes, hats and pairs of galoshes, stowing them on two tables. It was a great responsibility. Gaidaroff helped me and wielded his humour to assuage the impatience of the people queuing up with their coats. At around ten o’clock, Mr Elfterescu showed up, insisting that he was a student and should not have to pay.
‘Boss, why didn’t you tell me that we were having a ball tonight! I just caught the last train. I didn’t even have time to drop by Malec’s place. Poor lad, he’ll be so disappointed.’
I sent him to our room, which was next to the ballroom and the cloakroom. I laughed with Gaidaroff in anticipation of the enthusiasm with which the ‘Lion’s’ arrival would be greeted. Then Nonora appeared.
‘Can you believe it? He addresses me as tu! He’s revolting! Worse than Malec! I shall slap his face!’
‘Don’t go over the top.’
‘I shall slap him, I tell you, I shall slap him – both him and Malec! Who, may I ask, told him that we were having a ball! Wherever did you find them?’
While we were enjoying Nonora’s tirade, Radu left the room, followed by the deputy chairman and Măruica. They were annoyed.
‘Did you know that Malec’s friend is here? He won’t shut up about Malec. We can’t take it anymore.’
‘He keeps saying, “He’ll be so disappointed!”’
‘And he’s addressing everyone as tu.’
‘And he’s so impertinent’, added Măriuca timidly. ‘He called me his “little hen”. Do I look like anybody’s little hen?’
Gaidaroff gallantly exclaimed, ‘Unbelievable.’
The deputy chairman searched for a practical and discreet way of getting rid of him.
Nonora had plucked up her courage: ‘I’ll hit him!’
‘Be reasonable’, we hastily advised her.
Just then the chairman came in, looking apprehensive.
‘Guess who has turned up? It’s him – Malec’s friend.’
‘The “Lion”, we know.’
‘Why did you let him in? He’s going around telling everyone how he met Malec. He’s laughing at his own jokes, clapping his hands. He’s ruined the party.’
We were all furious, although we couldn’t help but admire how comical and bizarre was the situation Mr Elefterescu had forced upon us for the second time: it was like something straight out of vaudeville. I laughed without any ill will and promised the chairman I would write a comedy with those two strange friends.
A local girl asked me, softly and in embarrassment: ‘Excuse me, is it true that the student sitting at the mayor’s table met Malec or is it a joke?’
Nonora hotly explained the difference between Malec the movie star and Malec the friend of Mr Elefterescu. It wasn’t long before the ‘Lion’ himself made his entrance, flushed with wine.
‘It’s too hot in here, open the windows and then you’ll cool off – that’s how Malec’s sister cools off!’
No one dared make a move. The natural affability of the ‘Boss’ was disarming. He went up to Nonora and gave her a roguish wink.
‘Have you ever been with a Jew?’
The chairman intervened.
‘No politics, please, and no innuendoes. The young lady is indisposed.’
‘I’ll take care of her, boss, but maybe she’s already in love?’
The deputy chairman, polite and restrained, began a sentence with two premises.
‘Therefore, the conclusion.’
‘Joking aside, boss! We’re only students once.’
Nonora hastily put on her coat, said ‘Good night’, and left.
Radu and I ran into the street. There was no way she was coming back.
‘He torments me! He’s obsessed with that Malec of his. I see him – he’s here. They’re both insane, or else he’s drunk.’
Radu wanted to accompany her home, but Nonora accepted my offer. We waited in the train station for the eleven-fifteen. Nonora asked for a liqueur and coffee. I offered a packet of cigarettes. She didn’t seem to remember.
‘I’m bored again. Anyway, cigarettes are bad for you, and you’re wasting your time if you think I’m going to kiss you, especially without an audience or any rivals.’
Then I grabbed her hand and bit it savagely. Her eyes glazed over in dark circles; she trembled. She hid the bite under a handkerchief. Silence. Several travellers stared and then looked away from us. Nonora didn’t seem embarrassed; she smoked and filled her shot glass with liqueur. I admired her composure.
‘Maybe you also know how to kiss?’
The question hissed forth from her lips and eyes.
‘Yes.’
‘What a shame. You’ve ceased to be interesting.’
I knew she was playing hard to get. I was closer to her now than I had ever been. I wasn’t sure what to say to her. I didn’t know anything; neither how to look at her, nor where to put my hands, nor whether I should bite her again.
‘Nonora!’
‘You’re being affected.’
I spent the two-hour train journey in an agitated state, forcing myself to not kiss her, or to hold her. I kept asking myself, without knowing whether I wanted to ask, or whether the question had a mind of its own: Do I love her? I did not have an answer. But I felt very sad when my answer was: Yes, I love her. It seemed to me that a new question sprouted from this answer: It is love? And I thought to myself: No! No!
Nonora was bored, so she whistled. She told me how much I would have to change for her to like me: I would have to learn jokes, take her to the theatre, learn how to walk arm in arm with her without tripping up, speak with her chivalrously in public, without showing myself up, be self-confident, learn how to dance, have my suits tailored on Victory Avenue, give up books, end my friendship with Radu.
In the train station we barely managed to find a horse-drawn cab. Nonora was deep in thought. She spoke to me more gently than before. From the depths of my soul arose forgotten longings from adolescence, from the years when I was writing the Diary. Someone screamed inside: will power, will power, will power! My soul lit up, as if after a rediscovery. But the light was pale, flickering. Nonora spoke to me kindly and warmly. And then again grew silent.
Within me the longings swelled, expanded. I saw the whole year crumbling away because of Nonora. If only I liked her. But I did not like her. She merely troubled me.
As we neared her house, Nonora whispered to me, with her mouth very close: ‘Tomorrow I’ll come over.’
‘I might not be at home.’
Smiling, Nonora looked at me, without growing annoyed, without frowning.
‘You’re beginning to be interesting.’
I paid the cabman, who drove away with his ears pricked up. I felt the urge to say: ‘Nonora, I’m the one who’s bored now. I have feelings, I’m made of flesh and blood. You irritate me without even being a femme fatale. And you’re certainly not La femme et le pantin. Under no circumstances will I go to the cinema with you, and I won’t even see you very often. You’re pursuing me in vain. And besides, I have things to do.’
Nonora was walking beside me. I sensed something was wrong.
‘You’re ridiculous. You and Radu are both sick: you both think that you’re irresistible. You probably think I wanted to seduce you, am I right? I only ever visited you in passing, that’s all. Don’t play the victim. You might have been more polite, if you had other things to do.’
I was not sure how to respond. We wished each other a cold and reserved good night. On the street, on my way back home, I felt strange but somehow happy. ‘I have will power, I have will power.’ I lied to myself.
After that, Nonora never knocked on the door of my attic again.
They got rid of Mr Elefterescu through questionable methods: they gave him rum and white wine to drink. He sang Gaudeamus all by himself in the restaurant, started crying, swore that he loved Nonora, and promised to enrol Malec’s wife and sister in the club.
Gaidaroff and Radu sat next to him, to make sure he did not break any glasses. The chairman personally apologised to the families the ‘Lion’ had sat down next to and asked: ‘Are you anti-Semites?’
After midnight, he started speaking Italian with Gaidaroff, ending every phrase with the lament: ‘Il fovero, Malec.’
He accused the association of not knowing how to party ‘like students’: they should have made Nonora stay, and punished her by forcing her to kiss him. What was more, they should have banned dancing in couples and forced the public to perform a traditional Romanian ring dance. He said he would have sung, if Nonora had accompanied him. He told numerous stories about Malec’s father, who knew how to play the flute. He laughed so loudly during these stories, that he had to take off his collar. He wanted to enter the hall and address the public. To hold him back, Radu stepped on his foot. Mr Elefterescu began to cry and then insulted the chairman in his absence, calling him a ‘Yid’.
After two bottles, he passed out.
FOUR: INTERMEZZO
It was a dark and restless winter for me. For two months, from when I first met the chairman to the night I parted with Nonora, I had been a stranger to myself. I felt, at an organic level, how I had changed under the influence of the visitors to my attic.
I had grown incoherent, disoriented, beset by weaknesses, like all the other members of the choir. I spent too much time thinking about Nonora, and these thoughts did nothing to enrich my soul, but rather upset it, sucked it dry, coarsened it.
The walk home was excruciating. I had felt so wonderful, every evening, in a full attic. Warmth, cigarette smoke, young voices, Nonora’s nearness, Radu’s friendship, Gaidaroff’s jokes – but now, silence. I had forgotten about the temptations that overwhelm the soul on solitary evenings. I rediscovered the austere voluptuousness of a day concluded in silence, at a wooden table, unknown and unwanted by anyone. The nostalgic serenity printed on my brow by temptations overcome, by a society life left behind once and for all, by the joys the soul had tasted, savoured, and never revealed to another soul.
Day after day I forced myself back onto my old path. I sank into difficult questions, fretted about the decisions I had to make, without having the courage to do so. Once again my nights were disturbed by insomnia-induced anxiety. I promised myself that I would not avoid the deepest self-scrutiny.
My first decision: to repair the deficiencies I had discovered in the autumn. I rediscovered the discipline of morning study in my attic, writing notes and abstracts. But such work neither drained nor soothed me. Torment came in the form of Nonora and the experiences I foresaw with the continuation of our relationship. I told myself: that was life, this is reading; that was courage, freshness, novelty, this is undemanding cowardice and vicariousness. And I was not sure whether I should congratulate myself on the step I had taken, one that provided me with a purpose and focus, but which had, perhaps, separated me from life.
I attempted a return to asceticism. Insincere, and subject to Radu’s temptations, my asceticism would soon fail. I had resigned myself to submit to biology, without sentimentality and without wasting any more time. I did not want to squander myself on pointless sexual liaisons. What could Nonora have offered me in exchange for my self-denial? A few months of sexual companionship, and even then her promises were doubtful. But I would have welcomed those months, genuinely and with arms flung wide, on a purely sexual basis, as befits two creatures with different souls and minds. But the danger lay elsewhere: in the derivatives of the carnal act, in the sentimentalism and posturing. I was afraid we would lie to ourselves and waste time in cheap and idle talk. The time of my youth, dedicated to struggle or delight. Time, which I fiercely desired and fecundated with my blood and brains, would drain away to nothing with Nonora, as with any other thoughtless and mediocre youth.
The sincerity I had struggled stubbornly to maintain would have been destroyed, all the experiences of adolescence annulled. I would have become a statistic, a marionette, a frame animated by the life of other bodies.
If I only loved her.
The hours were more and more my own, and yet they brought me no solace. I waited for it; a tranquillity as cold and serene as the clarity of the sea after a storm. But my soul was murky, murky.
Difficult days followed, in a snowed-in attic. My decision to remain alone made its impression on my new friends. The chairman found another headquarters, in a room at some company. I was so sad the day they took away the files, the leftovers from the raffle, the library. Nothing remained but shadows in an empty room and memories in my soul. An autumn and a past started to coalesce. Oh Nonora, Nonora – if only her lips and her curves had never tempted me, I would have remained close to everyone else. I would have come to know mediocre happiness and the dull grey of a life lived, without any significant steps forward. I would have acquired the cynical, sentimental bitterness of those who say: I was so alive when I was young! Why do people confuse wasting youth with living it? Why do my peers not understand that a certain kind of personality, guided by a certain kind of mind, can, over the course of a few vivid and intense weeks, experience whole years’ worth of their hopes and dreams? And why do they not understand that the imperative of youth is always to move on?
I waited, waited for the quiet and calm of winter thaw. But once my troubles with Nonora had departed, other troubles took hold of me. I was not trying to find out who I was. None of the people who endured the flesh and the spirit alongside me knew themselves, so I told myself. I would never succeed in knowing myself as well as I knew my library. But sometimes, I surprised myself. I had moments of clarity; I was struck by the feeling that this was me, and anything I did or said differently came not from me, but from someone else inside me. I tried to make sense of these experiences. But I found little success; they were mutually exclusive, contradictory, and cancelled each other out.
I decided to choose certain of my personal traits and declare: this is me! I correlated these features and commanded myself not to live inwardly except to nourish them and help them to grow. I wanted to create a unified whole, no matter the risk of self-denial and self-mortification. Otherwise, I would never accomplish any of the things I had postponed until full adulthood. Maturity meant oneness, I decided.
My youth had to have some meaning outside of books. I needed to start maturing, to prepare my soul for the revelations that would soon bestow life upon me. And this new life would take place only inside me, without anyone suspecting a thing. Soon, all my supervision and fostering of my inner life would release into my mind and soul a flood, whose source no one would be able to comprehend.
